Back to school – or not!

My last post’s title was somewhat disingenuous. When I returned from Halifax on Monday afternoon and began to get ready for Tuesday’s APM rehearsal, I had an absolutely fabulous thought: UAlbany classes had begun that day, and I was home! Yes, folks, I’m on sabbatical leave this fall, and I barely noticed that UA had begun. So while I back to rehearsal, I am not back to school.

We professors get a sabbatic leave of one semester every 7 years, provided we have a worthwhile project to pursue, and one with a likelihood of leading to an important academic contribution. It is the place of academia to contribute to the world’s knowledge, as highfalutin as that sounds, in our own specialized areas. Or our sabbatics can be used to improve our own teaching, or the university’s teaching, or such things as that. Most professorial books wouldn’t happen without the concentrated time a sabbatic allows. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

One of my Jean friends (I have two close friends named Jean, whom I would like to call my pair of Jeans, but they’d kill me, individually and collectively) reminded me that the root of “sabbatic” is “sabbath,” or rest. A sabbatical leave is a time for rekindling that drive that makes us great teachers and researchers. It’s a chance to renew, refresh, reboot.

So I’m home, rebooting. So far I haven’t found the “rest” part, but there’s a calm at the center of my buzy-ness that wouldn’t be there if I was at UA teaching Chorale how to sing and answering a million first-week questions from students.

Of course I miss my students terribly…but I’m getting over it, and quite quickly.